Full Comment Forum: Without CanCon, would there still be Rush?

Without CanCon, would there still be Rush?

Pierre Juneau died this week. As a friend of Pierre Trudeau he was a key proponent of “Canadian content” regulations that required broadcast stations to give airtime to Canadian artists, and was widely criticized for it. But 40 years later it’s impossible to deny Canadian talent has flourished at many levels. Were critics wrong to complain so much about Ottawa trying to feed local artists to the masses?

Marni Soupcoff in Toronto: I am against government involvement in the arts because I think it’s a violation of freedom of expression — and even though “CanCon” requirements are the sort of paternalistic interference Ottawa calls “protection,” I am not convinced they do artists any favors. In principle, the idea is that we will never watch or listen to Canadian artists unless we are forced to by government regulators. Not only is it insulting, it results in bad Loverboy tunes from the ‘80s being given far more airplay than they deserve. It is also incredibly expensive for media to comply with — like all regulations, the “CanCon” rules have grown more complicated and intrusive over the years. And should we really be so proud about a policy that rewards programs and songs exclusively for their “citizenship” without any consideration of their merits?

Lorne Gunter in Edmonton: I’m with Marni. Even if it could be shown that CanCon rules had some positive impact on the development of Canadian talent by protecting it from foreign competition, on a philosophical level the rules were always wrong, wrong, wrong. Why on Earth should a government commission (the CRTC) have any role in deciding what free adults choose to listen to on the radio or watch on television, especially in an era of hundreds of channels and limitless “radio” services online and via satellite? CanCon’s affront to freedom has always been greater than the “need” to develop a homegrown cultural industry. I used to joke that if ever I were elected PM, my first act upon hearing that the CBC decision desk had declared my government elected would be to call the chairman of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) and tell him to clear out his and his staff’s offices. Then I’d order in the wrecking balls, level the building and pour salt in its foundations (the ancient preventative against the recurrence of a plague). Of all the arrogant, meddling institutions created during the Trudeau era to re-engineer Canadian society, the CRTC was the most arrogant and meddlesome. Thankfully, it has grown far less so over the decades, but why should it have any say on the content of our airwaves or the information on the Internet. (The CRTC hasn’t, as yet, devised a way to regulate the Internet, but it regularly tries to find ways. And the attempts themselves are indicative of its lack of philosophical commitment to free expression.)

I would also argue that Canadian talent does not need government protection and never has. Just look at the closing ceremonies of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. The musical guests were all world famous and all Canadian – Nickelback, Michael Bublé, Neil Young, Avril Lavigne, Alanis Morissette, Hedley and others. Not one of them was famous only in Canada. Indeed, most of them were as famous in the rest of the world as they were at home. And they didn’t become famous internationally because of government intervention. There are no CanCon regulations in the U.S. or Britain, for instance. Their popularity was earned based on talent rather than the result of protectionism.

I would argue our performers don’t need government coddling and that, even if they did, there is no justification for it.

Matt Gurney in the Temples of Syrinx: I generally agree with Marni and Lorne, but with a few quibbles — I’m not sure we can say that, for example, it was incredibly expensive for radio stations to meet CanCon standards for rock music. I chatted this morning with a gentleman who got his start in media as a rock DJ for a small station out east, that the CRTC required meet a CanCon limit of one-third. So they had two stacks of records — one Canadian, one everyone else. He made sure that every third album he dropped the needle on was from the Canadian pile. That’s not all that arduous.

And I also take some exception to Lorne’s listing of major Canadian rock acts, because that might not have been the point. It seems to me that the best CanCon could ever do was help Canadian artists become somewhat larger fish in Canada’s small cultural pond. It may well have helped some Canadian bands, regardless of their artistic merit, survive, make an honest buck and produce something genuinely Canadian. Worth the cost and the price in freedom? No, but worth considering that the smaller bands aren’t the same as Canadian acts that blow out onto the world stage in a big way, which needed a little extra magic. Example: The best rock band of all time, Rush, was playing the bar and club scene in Toronto in the 70s. They even played my dad’s high school prom. Weren’t going anywhere, as the music scene in Toronto at the time was apparently more easy listening. So Rush paid to record an album and distributed it. They might have gone nowhere had a radio DJ in Cleveland, Ohio not been sent the record by a friend of the band. She checked it out, and didn’t think much of a lot of what she heard, but really liked one track, “Working Man.” So she had it played. And the phones lit up. People loved it, and then the station played the rest of the record … more calls came in.

Rush, after toiling for years in Toronto, broke into the big leagues thanks to one DJ in Cleveland. If not for that, the best the CRTC could have possibly done was maybe keep them alive a while longer, playing Marathon shows at country fairs and rock fests in northern Ontario while hopefully leaving the guys enough time to work their real jobs. And then we would have been denied their insight into talking trees, gleaming alloy aircars (two-lanes wide) and the fall of the Solar Federation. They would have been Nobody’s Hero.

Marni Soupcoff in a house without cable in midtown Toronto: I agree that the actual PLAYING of CanCon is not expensive for radio stations. And certainly television bears a greater overall burden given the requirements for networks to actually finance original productions. But even on the radio broadcast side, it’s not as simple as just making two piles of records (oh how quaint that word sounds today!). For one thing, most new stations are licensed with a 40% CanCon requirement, making the arithmetic of the piles more difficult. But more seriously, the expense comes in the lawyers required to comply with the arbitrary and convoluted point system that is used to determine what songs count as Canadian. Let’s see now, did the person who composed the lyrics to this tune have an ordinary place of residence in Canada for the six months immediately preceding their contribution to the musical composition? Or were they spending too much time in Buffalo?

It isn’t clear that CanCon is such a help to emerging or small Canadian acts, either. Why? Because the requirements can be fulfilled by just playing well-established big-name Canadians over and over again. I don’t see how extra Neil Young rotations do anything to make it easier for a new Canadian band to break through. (Though they are very much preferable to the Loverboy repeats.) As Matt’s Rush example shows, “making it” is often an accident of fortune. And fortune is not constrained by international boundaries. Canadians with talent and luck will find fans somewhere. Many times that somewhere will be the United States. And that’s OK. When artists earn their popularity, as Lorne says, they will eventually become known across the world. Where they begin to take flight is of little import. And it’s futile to try to engineer the phenomenon from on high.

To me, CanCon requirements look most ridiculous when you consider how many people now simply select their own music and television shows from iTunes, bypassing networks and radio stations entirely. Big Brother is being overtaken by technology.

Lorne Gunter blasting Nickelback’s “Burn it to the Ground”: I think Matt’s Rush example actually proves the case against CanCon. The band didn’t become famous until after it got mega airplay in Cleveland and the States, where, of course, there was no CanCon requirement to play Rush at all. As I understand it, Matt’s point was CanCon perhaps contributed indirectly by helping Geddy Lee et al hold out in the music industry here until their big break came Stateside. But that’s the best that could be said of it. Canadian content rules were not responsible for Rush’s fame and fortune.

The regulations themselves, too, were ridiculous. If the artist was Canadian, that wasn’t always enough. The producers had to be Canadian or the studio and technicians. They were written more like unionized labour codes than cultural guidelines. The song “(Everything I Do) I Do it for You,” by Vancouver’s Bryan Adams — which became a world #1 hit after being featured in Kevin Costner’s god-awful movie “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves” — was ruled by then-CRTC commissioner Keith Spicer as insufficiently Canadian because it wasn’t recorded here. Spicer’s ruling was emblematic of the arrogance and pomposity of the CanCon enforcers. He entitled it “(Everything I Do) I Do it for the Canadian Music Industry.” It was typical of the we-know-better-than-you attitude that ran through CanCon — and to some extent still does.

Matt Gurney at Lakeside Park, near some Subdivisions: My main point is that Rush is fantastic. My close-runner-up point is that without that lucky break outside of Canada, where CanCon is meaningless, the best a lot of Canadian acts can hope for is to struggle in a tiny market. I agree with Marni that modern technology makes it meaningless. I agree with Lorne about burning it to the ground (to paraphrase a great film, “Nuke the CRTC from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.”). But the point is bigger than that — even with CanCon protection, a great band that would go on to sell a gazillion records and tour the world for the next 40 years needed to get very lucky outside of Canada to go anywhere. If that hadn’t happened, as I said, maybe they’d play Rockfest up north, and then go back to their jobs at Home Depot. It’s the limited ambition of CanCon that really irks me. Even if the intrusive and paternalistic system “works”, the artists don’t benefit all that much. Putting along in Canada is a Far Cry from doing really well abroad. When it comes to CanCon, only that basis alone, we’re better off Losing It.